


Let You Tend Your Flowers Well, Lest the Crows of Mourning Pluck Their Crop of Bones

by leonidaslion



Series: Suite!verse [17]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dark, Disturbing Themes, Dubious Consent, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-23
Updated: 2011-08-23
Packaged: 2017-10-22 23:36:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/243827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leonidaslion/pseuds/leonidaslion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No secret stays buried forever...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let You Tend Your Flowers Well, Lest the Crows of Mourning Pluck Their Crop of Bones

**Author's Note:**

> [Art](http://charlie-d-blue.livejournal.com/9415.html) by charlie-d-blue  
> [More Art](http://charlie-d-blue.livejournal.com/13379.html) by charlie-d-blue  
> [Art + Fanmix](http://abendiboo.livejournal.com/13726.html") by abendiboo
> 
> [Vid](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyyQMBKWG3I) by loverstar  
> [Trailer](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWxN30zvGw8) by loverstar  
> [Vid 2](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJmC3R8PME4&feature=related) by loverstar
> 
> [Audiofic](http://audiofic.jinjurly.com/category/seriessuiteverse) by juice817

It’s Dean’s fault.

He isn’t being as careful as he ought, isn’t watching his thoughts and closely guarding his soul.

It’s warm, summer outside, and the sliding doors leading out to the balcony are open. Fresh air flows in, scented with green and growth for the first time in Dean’s memory. Below, over the past two months or so, Dean has watched as slaves hauled in new trees, and laid down grass, and arranged flowerbeds. There was even a squirrel release, which he laughed at disbelievingly while Sam stood behind him, massaging his shoulders.

“Too much?” Sam asked, kissing the nape of his neck.

“Not until you bring in the butterflies,” Dean answered. It was meant to be a joke, and Sam laughed like he was supposed to, so Dean didn’t give it another thought.

Only the next afternoon, there they were: two huge trucks backing up within view of the balcony, and rolling up their rear doors, and pouring forth a glittering, flashy flood of rainbow wings. Dean’s initial, instinctive enjoyment of the sight—he’d defy anyone to see something like that and continue jaded—was quickly eclipsed by a wash of cold.

The resources and determination required to pull off such a dazzling display in such a short amount of time were staggering. It was too much, a Gesture reminding Dean of where he was, and what Sam was, and what Sam could do. It was also far too accurate a measure of Sam’s insanity, of his skewed sense of proportions.

Somehow, for some unfathomable reason, Sam had plucked Dean’s careless words out of the air and reframed them as a request. It was the butterflies he fixated on, but he might have latched onto anything, really. Any word of Dean’s. Any sarcastic, flippant remark.

Those could just as easily have been demons as butterflies down there, flooding out from Hell in a choking swarm—hadn’t Dean seen as much in the first few months After?

Dean turned and Sam was sitting in the armchair where Dean left him. Dean wasn’t sure where to focus his attention: on Sam’s self-satisfied expression or on the butterfly perched on the back of Sam’s hand. Sam smiled at him. The butterfly lazily fanned gossamer blue wings as large as a sparrow’s.

Then, suddenly, a stiff, unrelenting wind punched in through the open sliding doors. The wind blustered around the confines of the room like a cyclone, and before Dean could lift a hand to shield his eyes from the whipping strands of his hair, the butterflies were there.

They were everywhere, actually, tearing in through the open window to batter helplessly against the walls and tumble through the center of the room in a confused glitter of rainbow velvet. Ben was laughing and running around through the swarm, wide-eyed with wonder at the sight. Sam sat where he was, calmly smiling while butterflies got caught in his hair, while they fought to cling to his shoulders and chest in a vain attempt to hide from the tempest.

There were butterflies on Dean as well, tickles of tiny feet and brushes of silken wings. He breathed through his nose in fear that he would open his mouth and find it filled like the room, like the air. He couldn’t move without dashing a battalion of butterflies to the ground, without stepping on those butterflies already there, and they were in his hair. They were crawling over the back of his hands and trembling against his palms.

And then Sam’s power was there as well, strong enough to overlay the physical sensation of feet and antennae and wings. Warmth glided over Dean’s skin. It slipped inside of him and found his heart and soul and stroked until Dean couldn’t focus on anything but the glittering, colored cyclone surrounding him and his own inability to get a breath.

There were wings left behind, after the wind swept the butterflies out again. Fragile, beautiful wings lying severed and scattered everywhere, carpeting the floor and any other surface flat enough to hold them. They left shimmering smudges on Dean’s back and legs when Sam pushed him down onto the bed, painted shimmering lines over Dean’s stomach and chest when Sam dragged them there. Soft, soft wings and Dean could still feel their frantic fluttering in his hair—a ghost sensation, a phantom touch.

Sam whispered to Dean as he touched what was his. He murmured feverish endearments and nonsense about butterfly wings and Dean’s green, green eyes— _my own butterfly, so beautiful, so bright, so fine_ —and then Dean’s cock was in Sam’s mouth and he was gripping the sheets and trying desperately not to feel like he was pinned to a mounting board.

But there are no butterflies today, unless maybe some of them survived the whirlwind and are fluttering around through the reconstructed park below. There’s only the lazy press of heat, making even Ben sluggish and slow where he lies on his stomach on the rug, playing with a LEGO set Sam brought him. Dean’s limbs seem coated with it, and weighed down by a heavy press of air that fills his mouth and throat with the taste of growth, of life, of the sun.

He’s lying on the couch on his back, with his head pillowed on Sam’s thigh and Sam’s hand in his hair. Sam is massaging Dean’s scalp, slowly and gently, and smiling down at him like there isn’t anywhere else but here. The tender expression on his face makes a stupidly wistful part of Dean’s mind think that the gold of his brother’s eyes might just be a reflection from the sun pouring in through the open sliding doors.

But that’s just a daydream and Dean knows it. Dean can’t help but know it because Sam’s power is sunk deep inside of him, the tattoo alive and the connection between them forced to its widest capacity.

Being opened and stretched to newfound depths didn’t feel great when it was happening, but that was hours ago. Dean has had more than enough time to get used to the strain and adjust to the rhythm of Sam’s heart in his chest. Sam’s contentment and cherishing love have had an equally sufficient opportunity to permeate Dean’s entire being and saturate him with mind-numbing bliss. He’s languid as he bumps his head up against Sam’s hand in wordless, lazy demand.

“Sensualist,” Sam murmurs in a fond accusation that brings a smile to Dean’s face. He obediently continues raking the fingers of one hand through Dean’s hair as his other hand slides down the side of Dean’s face to trace along his collarbone.

The caress rouses a niggling worry at the back of Dean’s head—Ben, doesn’t want to do this in front of his son. When he looks over at Ben from the corner of his eyes, though, Ben has his back to the couch. All of the kid’s attention is locked on the tiny men and buildings before him. It’s safe. Safe enough to chase this feeling a little further, anyway.

Shutting his eyes, Dean arches his back and pushes his chest up into Sam’s fingers as they slide beneath his shirt. Sam doesn’t even need to pause to undo any buttons on his way to tug on Dean’s left nipple, because Dean already did that himself before he lay down—just popped open the top few, of course, and with a careful eye to Sam’s mood, but it’s too damn hot today for perfect discretion.

Funny how it isn’t too hot for Sam to be all over him, though. It’s an absent thought, accompanied by memories of other days. Days when the heat was sunk into Dean and Dad was away and the apartment was fucking baking and he wanted, and Sam wanted, and neither of them could bear more than the lightest of contact between them.

“Ice cubes,” Sam says, a smile obvious in his voice.

Something shifts in Dean’s head, nudging him further toward the memory he was drifting into on his own, and yeah, fuck, that was good. Sam and his freaky, too-smart brain ( _my brother, the brainiac, Dean used to call him, and couldn’t ever quite keep his pride out of the teasing words_ ) had headed down to the corner store and come back with a bag of ice. The sheets were soaked by the time Dad returned, _Dean_ was soaked, and Sam’s hair was dripping, and his eyes were laughing, and they were kissing with a chunk of ice caught between both their teeth, and Dad, Dad almost caught them…

 _But he didn’t,_ Sam reassures him, slowing the rising tendrils of panic before they can tense Dean’s muscles. _He never knew, Dean._

Beneath Dean’s shirt, Sam’s fingers move from his left nipple to his right, pinching and tugging and drawing weak squirms from Dean. To make matters worse, his pants are suddenly uncomfortably tight. Why the fuck is he even wearing them, anyway? It’s too hot for pants, damn it. Or maybe that’s just Dean’s baser instincts telling him that there shouldn’t be any clothing between them—not now, not when Dean feels like this, when Sam feels like this—and Sam should be able to get some ice from somewhere, shouldn’t he?

A pulse of aroused agreement throbs through him, and Sam’s thigh shifts beneath his head.

“I’ll put Ben to sleep.”

Dean’s brow furrows—mid-afternoon, it’s too early for that—and then he remembers Sam can turn out the lights on either of them whenever he wants. That ability has given Dean pause more than once, but right now any unease he might be feeling has been drowned beneath the understanding that Sam is going to use his power to give Dean what he’s craving. He’s going to make it good.

Dean protests lazily as Sam lifts Dean’s head and moves out from under him, but a wordless promise of return sweeps over him and he quiets again, allowing himself to be tugged higher on the couch and his head to be rested on the arm.

The sound of Sam talking to Ben is a low, comfortable murmur in the background—unimportant compared to the sensation of Sam still inside him, Sam’s power lingering where Sam’s hands can’t. Dean revels in the stroking, intimate touch, his eyes half-lidded as he looks at the blue, pale sky through the open sliding doors.

To think he almost missed out on this, almost threw it away. To think he was ever that blindly, miserably selfish.

An image flick-flashes through his head—the door when it was still a window, when it was blown out and there was nothing between him and a fall but air. Leaning forward, and forward, and it wouldn’t hurt, it would be over so quickly, and—

The flicker skips away again, out of sight like a stone beneath a lake, and Dean is watching the sky, and soaking in the heat, and listening to the quiet, peaceful day.

It takes him a while to notice that there should be murmuring going on to his left, or at least the softer sounds of Sam scooping Ben up and putting him into his room. Instead there’s something near enough to silence that it might as well be—birdsong, distant from below; winds moving past the balcony rail. The sound of Dean’s heart, slowly speeding for no good reason.

He stirs, turning his head to the side.

Ben is already asleep, face squished up against the rug and mouth slightly open. His right hand is still clenched around one of his LEGO men, his other arm twisted at such an awkward angle that it’s clear Sam’s power put him out instantly.

Sam is motionless where he’s crouched by Ben’s side, staring over at Dean. His face is still, with no outward sign of distress, but his power continues to hold the connection open between them, and unsettling emotions are rocking through the mind-numbing blur of Dean’s arousal. Shock and anger and horror and fear and desperation and rage hit him with wave after wave—first blinding him, and then knocking him free from his stupor.

He sits up—with difficulty, because his body doesn’t quite want to move—and twists on the couch to face his brother more fully.

“What’s wr—” Dean starts to ask, and then his entire body clenches up on him in a painful spasm. He thought he was stretched to full capacity before, but somehow Sam is thrusting his way deeper now. The forceful penetration isn’t just uncomfortable this time—it hurts, it leaves Dean split and bleeding on the inside where it doesn’t show. He needs to scream and can’t because his throat is locked and no part of him will budge as SamtheBoyKingBrotherLoverSammy shoves into him, finds the deep, still lake covering over his memories, and burns it dry in an instant.

The exposed bottom is cracked and ruined and steaming, and Sam plunges into that as well, digging down to where everything is still damp and muddied, and finds ( _oh god_ ) he finds ( _no_ ) things best left buried ( _please_ ) Dean put them there ( _god_ ) he hid them there ( _don’t_ ) for a reason ( _ben_ ) Sam can’t ( _the children_ ) do this ( _hurt yourself again_ ) he can’t ( _for any reason_ ) bring this up ( _very, very creative_ ) from where Dean put it ( _you will watch_ ) he hid it ( _god, no_ ) he

 _Toying absently with the cuff on his right wrist, Dean edges up to the rim and looks down. The street below is no longer asphalt, but glass: first melted and then baked to a high shine by the continuous lick of flames. As the fire shifts, the bones of the cars that were parked along the curbs in neat rows flicker in and out of view like ghosts. This close to the open air, whatever ward Sam uses to control the suite’s temperature isn’t working as well, and sweat beads on Dean’s bare skin, making him shiver._

 _Fire is pretty high up there on Dean’s list of Ways Not to Die, but the suite is on the top floor and there’s plenty of space between him and the lingering flames below. No matter what kind of protections Sam has woven into his body, a fall from this height is bound to kill him instantly. Dean won’t have time to feel his flesh begin to burn before the blissful darkness folds around him. Before everything is silenced._

 _Oh God, please, he thinks, yearning, and_

Sam tosses him loose and Dean collapses back against the couch, breathing hard and sweating. His mind is a disoriented tangle of thoughts, but foremost is the stark, cold dread of discovery, and it’s turning Dean’s stomach inside out.

Sam stares at him, expressionless, and Dean stares back. He can’t speak. He can’t even get enough air past the panic in his throat to breathe.

Wordlessly, Sam looks down at Ben.

“No!” the word blurts from Dean’s mouth somehow, although it’s choked and quiet without the benefit of air behind it. He still can’t move, and his brain isn’t working well enough to know whether his body is failing him of its own accord or if this is Sam’s doing. It’s hot in the room, high summer and Dean knows that, but suddenly he feels like he’s been dipped in ice. Cold, cold, can’t get warm. His head and insides ache from Sam’s rough invasion, but that’s a secondary thought, unimportant.

Sam reaches out without taking his eyes from Dean’s and rests a hand on the back of Ben’s head.

“Ben,” he says in a voice eerily devoid of emotion. “Ben, wake up.”

Now Dean’s body does work, somehow launching him up from the couch and into motion. He takes a single step and a wall of air slams into him, knocking him back down against the couch.

“ **Sit** ,” Sam says, a word that tastes of power and rolls and echoes through Dean’s head like thunder.

“Daddy?” That’s Ben, coming around again.

Dean can’t move, but he’s going to be sick.

“Hang on a sec, champ,” Sam says, still in that absent, uncaring tone. His hand on Ben’s head is stroking—soft and careful, the way Dean saw him pet a stray puppy when they were both kids. He’s still looking at Dean, still watching him, and although Dean can’t feel even the faintest echo of emotion from Sam any longer, he’s starting to see a shadow rise behind his brother’s eyes.

“Sammy,” he says, using that name in an attempt to bypass the darkness and appeal to the ruined man below. “Don’t do this. It was—I was stupid, okay? It was a long time ago, and I was—I’m sorry, okay? I’m fucking sorry.”

“Did I ever do or say anything to indicate to you that there was a statue of limitations on this kind of thing?” Sam asks.

Dean’s vision blurs as he shakes his head and fights against his brother’s command in an attempt to regain his feet. He can’t stop Sam by force, he knows that, but if he can just… if he can get over there and touch him, if he can remind Sam that things have changed, that he’s doing his best to surrender, maybe…

“What’s going on?” Ben asks, this time with a tremor of fear in his voice. He sits up, looking back and forth between them, then makes a choice and moves toward Dean. “Daddy?”

Sam reaches out almost casually and snags the back of Ben’s t-shirt, pulling Ben back against his chest. With Ben standing and Sam crouched the way he is, they’re almost the same height. Dean can’t look at Sam’s expressionless face without seeing Ben’s fear. He can’t look at Ben’s eyes without seeing his brother’s.

“Don’t,” he whispers, helplessly.

Sam curls in closer against Ben’s back, one hand loose in his hair and the other hugging him around the middle. Ben turns his head, trying to look at Sam, and then winces as Sam’s hand tightens in his hair.

“Daddy!” he cries, squirming, “You’re hurting me!”

“Sorry, kiddo,” Sam says, although there’s no regret in the words. “I don’t want to do this, but your Daddy’s making me.”

Dean opens his mouth to shout down the lie, but he can’t get the words out. Mostly because he doesn’t actually believe it is a lie. This is his fault, he’s the one who tried to take a swan dive after Sam forbid it, he’s the one who forgot where he was and failed to keep the secret buried where it belonged.

This is his fault.

When Ben turns hurt, questioning eyes on him, all Dean can do is whisper, “I’m so sorry.” His vision blurs and then clears again as hot tears spill down his cheeks.

Standing limply in Sam’s grasp, Ben starts to cry as well. Dean doesn’t know whether Ben is actually scared enough for tears or if it’s an empathic mimicry of the moisture streaking Dean’s face, but he thinks about that afternoon in the hall. He thinks about yelling at Ben, and telling him that he wasn’t really Dean’s son, and making him cry harder than he’s crying now. Making the kid sob with his entire body.

Just because Ben doesn’t remember it, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

Stricken with another pulse of guilt, Dean moves to comfort Ben and runs into Sam’s command, which intensifies at the first tensing of Dean’s muscles. Hissing whispers chase each other around the inside of his skull, holding him back. Holding him down.

He might as well be chained to the fucking couch.

“You son of a bitch,” he says thickly, shifting his attention from Ben to the monster holding him. “Don’t—don’t do this. You—you’ll lose your leverage.”

Sam laughs—a short, humorless burst of air—and then says, “I don’t think we need it any more, do you?”

And damn him, fucking _damn_ him, Dean knows what he means. He knows exactly what Sam is talking about, and he hasn’t ever hated himself quite as much as he does at this moment, sitting feebly on the couch while Sam watches him and waits for some hint of response from the tattoo and there’s…

There’s nothing. Dean knows exactly what’s about to happen, and the tattoo is placid on his back. Calmly waiting for the storm to be over so that Sam can go back to stroking it again.

A swell of twisted emotions rises up from Dean’s stomach, clawing into his chest and throat, and then bursts from his mouth in a broken, wordless scream of impotence that makes Ben flinch and cry harder.

“Are there any other surprises you want to share with me now?” Sam asks dispassionately. “I’d take the opportunity to confess your sins, if I were you. After all, in for a penny…” He adjusts the arm slung around Ben’s middle, keeping him close.

Dean’s mostly past coherency, but there are enough rational shreds left for him to shake his head.

“No?” Sam prods as he releases Ben’s hair to wipe some of the tears from his cheeks in a parody of tenderness. “No more dream lovers? No lingering moments with a shard of glass? No wondering what might happen if you brought the TV into the shower with you?”

Dean heaves in a hitching breath and chokes out, “That’s it, Sam. That’s—that’s all. Please, just—I know it was wrong, I won’t… I won’t do it again.”

Sam smiles at him, almost peacefully. Except his eyes are all wrong. His eyes are whirling, sickening storms of shadow and fire.

“Oh, I know you won’t.”

It hits Dean then, even more solidly than before, that this is really going to happen. Here, in this room, with Sam’s power locking his muscles so he can’t do anything but watch.

Now. Now, the tattoo will change; it’ll revert. But it doesn’t, and Dean knows it won’t, and his tears come faster.

“Please,” he begs. “Jesus, _please_.”

“I’ll tell you what,” Sam answers, his eerie calm finally shredding to let some hoarse, dark emotion through. “Because you’ve been so good lately, I’ll make it quick.”

Somehow, despite his own panicked horror, the glint of light on Sam’s cheek catches Dean’s eyes. He stares, unbelieving, as another tear slides down his brother’s cheek on the opposite side.

“Sammy,” Dean tries on a surge of desperate hope. “You don’t want to do this.”

Sam’s crying in earnest now—in a quiet, still way that’s nothing like the tears Dean remembers him crying Before—but his jaw firms and he stops brushing Ben’s cheek to grip his head. His hand is big enough to cover the entire back of Ben’s skull, fingertips just curling into sight on top.

“Ben,” he says. “Tell your daddy how much you love him.”

Ben’s tiny body shakes as he cries harder.

“Tell him!” Sam thunders, and Ben’s eyes snap open despite his tears. He looks at Dean, miserable and frightened ( _although not frightened enough, he doesn’t understand, he doesn’t know, there’s at least that_ ).

“I—I l-love—”

Sam tightens his hand, power flexing, and there’s a sickening crack. Ben screams, a high sound that spikes through Dean’s body and lodges in his heart, and then Sam clenches up again, harder, and the screaming stops. Ben’s mouth hangs open, a thin line of pinkish drool running from the corner of his lips. The whites of his eyes are red, and more blood trickles from his ears. When Sam opens his hand and lets Ben’s body slump to the floor, the back of his head is a horrible, shapeless mess.

Sam is still crying.

He stares at Dean for a moment, opens his mouth to say something, closes it again, and then stands up. The expression on his face as he looks down at Ben’s body is more confused than anything else. Like he doesn’t know how that mess got there. He looks back at Dean, starts to speak again, and then turns around without saying anything.

He walks on a meandering course around the couch and coffee table, pausing to lift Ben’s stuffed lion from the top of the TV where it’s perched, and then wanders into Ben’s room and shuts the door behind him.

The command holding Dean in place vanishes with the click of the door, but he doesn’t move. He can’t move. Instead, he sits where he is and stares down at Ben’s body—at the red stain slowly spreading out from his crushed head—and remembers, for no reason at all, the way Ben looked in the midst of all those butterflies. Happy, laughing, astounded by the unexpected brilliance of color.

Dean starts to shake. His body shudders, stomach heaving uselessly, and he leans forward, pressing his face into his hands.

The warm breeze coming in through the window smells like copper.


End file.
